Escape From Dachau: My 
Own, Private V-E Day

Samuel Pisar. a native of Poland, is an international lawyer. Alone among his family, he survived four years in Nazi death camps. This article is drawn from his keynote address to be delivered tomorrow at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington.

The day the Allies landed on the beaches of Normandy had been for us a day like any other. The toll in the gas chambers that day was higher than the losses suffered by the combined armies under Gen. Eisenhower's command on this, their longest day.

Judging by the brutality of our guards, we had every reason to believe that all of Europe was irrevocably lost, the Red Army smashed, England fighting alone, its back to the wall, against the seemingly invincible forces of darkness. And America! America was so unprepared, so divided, so far away. How could she be expected to reverse the collapse of civilization at this penultimate stage?

It took weeks for news of the U.S.-led invasion, beamed by the BBC from London across occupied Europe, to slip into Auschwitz. There was also an amazing rumor that the Russians had mounted a powerful offensive on the Eastern front.

Incredible! So God had not turned his face from the world after all. Could a miracle still prevent the millennium of the Third Reich? Oh to hang on, to hang on a little longer!

We could guess from the Nazis' mounting nervousness that the weight of battle was changing decisively. With the ground shrinking under their feet, they began herding us deeper and deeper into Germany. I was shunted to Sachsenhausen near Berlin, then Leonberg near Stuttgart, then Dachau near Munich--camps normally reserved for political prisoners, common criminals and homosexuals.

It was in a slave-labor enclave 50 miles away that I heard the silence of night torn by powerful explosions. Fellow inmates with military experience thought it sounded like artillery. Within hours. we were lined up to be evacuated, ahead of the "enemy advance." These forbidden words, never before heard, and even names of "enemy" commanders--Zhukov, Montgomery, Patton-- were now openly murmured.

I was beside myself with excitement. Who are these merciful saviors--Russian? British? American? Salvation seemed so near, and yet so far away.

Just as the hope of pulling through became more real, the danger increased. We were headed back to Dachau, which meant that at the last moment our torturers would destroy us. The final solution must be completed, the witnesses of the crime wiped out.

he death march, through winding back roads, continued day and night, halting only for meager rations of bread and water. At dawn, on the third day, a squadron of Allied fighter planes, mistaking our column for Wehrmacht troops. swooped down low to strafe us.

As the SS-men hit the dirt, their machine guns blazing in all directions, someone near me shouted "run for it!" A group of us kicked off our wooden clogs and made a clumsy, uncoordinated sprint for the trees. The fire caught most of us. Only I and five others made it into the forest alive.

We ran and ran, gasping for breath, until we were sure there was no pursuit. After nightfall we began to move toward the Western front. When we came close we decided to lie low, until the German retreat had passed us by.

One bucolic afternoon, holed up in the hayloft of an abandoned Bavarian barn, I became aware of a hum, like a swarm of bees, only louder, metallic, unearthly. I peeped through a crack in the wooded slats. Straight ahead, across the field, a huge tank leading a long, armored convoy lumbered my way.

From somewhere to one side I could hear the sound of exploding mortars. The tank's long cannon lifted its round head, turned slowly and let loose a deafening blast. The firing stopped. The tank resumed its cautious advance.

Automatically, I looked for the hateful swastika, but there was none. Instead I saw an unfamiliar emblem--a five-pointed white star.

In an instant the unimaginable flooded my mind and my soul. After four years in the pit of the inferno, I, convict No. B-1713, also known as Samuel Pisar, son of a loving family that had been wiped off the earth, have actually survived to behold the glorious insignia of the United States Army.

My skull seemed to burst. With a wild roar I stormed outside and darted toward the wondrous vision. I was still running, waving my arms, when suddenly the hatch of an armored vehicle opened, and a black face, shielded by helmet and goggles, emerged, swearing at me unintelligibly.

Having dodged death daily for so long. at that awesome moment I felt immortal, though to the G.I. my condition, at the heart of a battlefield, must have seemed desperate. Pistol in hand, he jumped to the ground to examine me more closely. as if to make sure the kid was not booby trapped.

To signal that I was a friend, and in need of help. I fell at his feet, summoned the few English words my mother used to sigh while dreaming of our deliverance, and yelled: "God Bless America!"

With an unmistakable gesture, the tall American motioned me to get up, and lifted me through the hatch--into the womb of freedom.

On V-E Day 1995, my gratitude to this blessed land, never trampled by tyrants or invaders, is as intense as it was 50 years ago, on that German battlefield. So is my conviction that the five- pointed star, which brought me life and freedom, must remain a symbol of hope to all victims of ethnic hatred, religious intolerance and terrorist violence.